ROI Tools for Lead Generation Marketing

There are five primary profit levers for any business: 1) the number of leads generated; 2) your lead-to-client conversion rate; 3) average margin per sale; 4) the number of repeat business; and 5) referrals.

One of the biggest mistakes in lead generation marketing is focusing exclusively on the first profit level: the number of leads.

It’s very common for marketers to talk about driving traffic or even conversions, but what you do after the lead has been attracted to your business is how you truly maximize revenue. Leads usually cost money. Converting a lead into a client, however, is often just as inexpensive as losing the lead to a competitor.

The math is simple: if it costs you $10 to generate a lead, and you spend $1,000, you get 100 leads. If each new client is worth $100 to you and you can only convert 10% of your leads into clients, you get 10 new clients who generate $1,000 for you.

That’s breakeven.

But if you can double your conversion rate to 20%, you’re basically turning a $1,000 marketing investment into $2,000 for a 100% profit (because now you have 20 clients worth $100 each).

I realize this isn’t groundbreaking stuff, but it’s what matters.

Here are some simple tools to get the most out of your lead generation marketing.

Use MailChimp for Email Marketing

According to Digital Marketing magazine, email marketing remains the strongest tool for nurturing leads. However, email marketing is not just a matter of bombarding the client with an endless stream of emails about your product or services.

You must deliver something your subscribers can actually use, whether it’s education, inspiration, or entertainment: webinars, infographics, articles, videos, coupons, tips. Don’t be shy about sending offers and promotions as well. The whole point of building a list is to make money, so it’s essential to include a soft call to action at the end of each educational email blast you send, as well as occasionally sending a pure offer. The nature of your business determines the frequency of your offers vs. pure content. In general, inexpensive products and services that people buy repeatedly can be marketed more frequently and aggressively.

I recommend MailChimp for most marketers. It’s easy to use, free up to 2,000 subscribers, and has advanced automation features built into it so that you can engage and nurture your list without spending too much time on it. You build your sales funnel while autoresponder series, set it, and let it run. You have to check your metrics to validate that your copywriting is effective, of course, but for the most, part MailChimp gives you at least 90% of the features you need compared with even the most expensive email marketing solutions on the market.

Pre-Filled Lead Forms from Facebook and LinkedIn

Both Facebook and LinkedIn now offer advertisers lead forms. This means that when someone in your targeted audience clicks your ad or your post, they are brought to a lead form that lives on the social media platform. Both Facebook and LinkedIn pre-fill the lead forms with the person’s actual information including name and email address.

This has three advantages over the traditional pay per click ad that would generally drive traffic to your site.

The first advantage is that it reduces the number of steps required for a potential lead to get in touch with your business. The person no longer has to type their information into a form, because the social media sites already have most of the information you as a business owner would want to have on your leads.

The second advantage is that the information pulled in from the lead’s social media profile is almost always accurate. People sign up for social media sites using their real email addresses and phone numbers.

The final and third advantage is that most testing shows that these native lead forms get a better conversion rate than landing pages. So it’s a win all around: more leads with more accurate information on each.

Setting the Right Keywords

Last but not least, your keyword strategy for both SEO and paid advertising campaigns must be aligned with your target audience. For example, “retirement planning financial advisor” may be searched far less frequently than “retirement calculator,” but if you were a financial advisor, would you rather meet with 10 people searching for an advisor, or 1,000 people who want a calculator?

As you’re using the Google keyword planner for research, make sure you’re considering the search intent of users. Also, look at the recommended keyword bids. The higher the bid, the more likely your competitors have found value in it, and the more likely you can profit from that keyword too.

If you have any questions at all about the right lead generation marketing tools you should be using, get in touch! Email gregg@plan2profit.com and let me know how I can help.

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ABOUT GREGG RUAIS

Gregg Ruais is a small business marketing consultant and the Founder of the Plan2Profit Digital Marketing Agency. A career marketer since 2004, Gregg has been directly involved with well over $50 million in sales as a copywriter, strategist, and Marketing Director. He earned an MBA from the University of Connecticut and has been published by Time Inc Affluent Media Group and YouGov.